A senior Kien Giang official allegedly embezzled billions of dong by falsifying payments made for buying foreign footballers for the provincial football club and other wrongdoing, and the Party Unit’s Inspection Committee has sought a police investigation into them.

The Inspection Committee announced Wednesday that an audit of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism had found that its deputy director Vo Dong Lap was responsible for misappropriation of VND7 billion (US$331,000).

Lap had shown higher transfer fees than actually paid by Kien Giang FC to buy foreign players and pocketed the difference of around $34,000, it said.

For instance, the actual fee for Oseni was US$55,000 but documents show the amount as $70,000. Lap had similarly embezzled $10,000 in the transfer of Tuluwase.

Besides, he had forced Oseni, Tuluwase, and another player, Friday, to pay him $3,000 each for their deal to go through, since his department ran the club.

Their transfers did not follow proper procedures either, according to the Inspection Committee.

Inspectors discovered Lap and his subordinates had violated regulations to misappropriate VND1.6 billion from the state exchequer and sponsors.

He was also found to have been slack at his job of overseeing his department-controlled Sports School and Sports Training Center where there had been wrongdoing to the tune of VND900 million on his watch.

Lap was found to have persuaded the school and center to buy equipment costing a total of VND1.7 billion from a shop owned his wife between 2010 and 2014.

Inspectors also indicted him for irresponsibility when he was head of a committee set up in 2011 to privatize the football club, saying its financial documents have yet to be transferred to his successors.